Penitence and Benediction
by shaleheart
Summary: As the consequences of her actions on Kingsman Bluff threaten to crack the foundation of the new Ministry of Magic, Willow sits in Azkaban awaiting trial. Can the two aurors assigned to her case bring the truth to light before the darkness swallows her whole?
1. Chapter 1: Revenant

_**Authors note: According to canon, when Kingsley Shacklebolt becomes MoM, he disbands the Dementors as guardians of Azkaban. For the purpose of this story, please assume that the dementors did not support Voldemort in WiWa 2 and they still guard in the same manner as before. I have consulted both wikias (and my own personal well of knowledge, which is fairly vast concerning these two subjects) as much as possible and tried to keep it true to canon besides a few small changes. This story should run about 15-20 chapters with one to two chapters per week. Enjoy.**_

 _Chapter 1: The Revenant_

As the first blush of the morning began to drift through her white muslin curtains, Willow groaned lightly. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut against the brightness of daybreak and breathed deeply, savoring the sweet vanilla musk of her lover laying at her side. Between the even, rhythmic breathing of her beloved and the dulcet chirping of the morning birds in the trees just outside her window, Willow found herself embracing the dawn with a smile for the first time in months. She pondered briefly about how important one person could be to her happiness before her furrowed brow and whirlwind of thoughts were interrupted by a soft whimper from the object of her musings. Armed with her patented smoochie face, she leaned in towards the other woman's lips, and gently roused her from her half-sleep.

"Good morning." She whispered dreamily, and Willow's heart melted. Basking for a moment in the glow of reconciled love, she gave Tara another quick peck in response and lifted the corner of her blanket, swinging her legs off of the side of the bed as she did so. As her toes buried in the fuzzy little rug next to her bed, she reached for her housecoat and stood on shaky legs. She could hear Tara, now fully awake, moaning softly and stretching behind her. The sound sent pleasant and familiar waves arousal through her belly, but she shook away the sensation and resumed her morning rituals. Tara smiled warmly at her from her own side, sliding out from between the soft sheets and readying herself to assist her girlfriend in making their bed. They worked together in silence to complete the task, stopping every few moments to lean over the bed and share a sweet kiss.

If it took an exorbitant amount of time to make their bed, the subsequent unmaking took twice as long. Tumbling together in a twist of naked limbs and freckled flesh, Willow worshipped Tara's confection with a fervor, stopping only to breathe and tease. Every time her lips left Tara's heated skin, she was rewarded with throaty growl or girlish whimper. She drank in her presence like a wilted flower, absorbing her paramore's light until she felt her heart would burst. As they lay together afterward with sheets wrapped around their ankles, Willow whispered saccharine nothings into Tara's ear. "Nothing will ever feel this good." She murmured, delighting in the quiver that shot through the woman in her arms.

The two women lay together for a few more moments of quiet harmony before pulling themselves from their comfort, remaking their bed, and dressing for the day. As Tara pulled her arms through the blue shirt she intended to wear that day, an unfamiliar scowl twisted Willow's pale features. She fucking hated that shirt. Startled by the harshness of her own thoughts, she swallowed her anxiousness, zipped the jeans she'd dragged up her legs, and tugged the white top over her head.

Willow finished dressing and turned to Tara, who had clothed herself unnaturally fast and stood seemingly frozen in pace by the window. The room darkened and a crack rang out like thunder, as though someone had split the sky. Her confused gaze dropped from Tara's startled face to the red stain slowly spreading across her chest. "Your shirt!" Tara exclaimed, and Willow rushed forward to catch her lover as she fell to the ground. Willow folded in upon herself, clutching Tara and chanting 'no' like a mantra. Her fingers grazed over her girlfriend's cooling skin, searching for a pulse and finding none. Sobbing earnestly, Willow pulled Tara's body against her and she screamed out to Osiris to release the light he had stolen from the world. His refusal triggered her explosion, and she shot her grief like a missile at the petulant God, sending him spinning into oblivion.

A flash and she was raising Buffy from the brink of death. Another and she was standing in the middle of the road in the California sun, chasing down a charter bus with a dead man aboard. If she closed her eyes she could almost hear Buffy telling her to stop, but the simple melody of vengeance singing in her ears drowned out the sounds of the world around her. The next thing she knew she was standing in the magic box, coaxing ancient knowledge from the books. The redness of her hair dripped from her, mixing with Tara's blood on her shirt and spreading, blackening her form until she was nothing but a shadow.

Another flash and she was standing in the woods, vines of her own will wrapped around Warren's limbs, splaying him spread eagle before her. Her head tilted towards the restrained man and Willow licked her lips, growing tired of the sounds he was making as he pleaded with someone - anyone to save him. A malevolent grin crossed her features and his lips sewed themselves shut, another physical manifestation of her will. She toyed with the bullet she had pulled from Buffy against his breadth casually, letting the metal dig into his flesh a fraction of the speed it had ripped through Tara's chest. Warren's muted shrieks of agony came together in a violent crescendo with the drum of retribution pounding through her chest.

"Bored now." With a raised hand, Willow ripped his skin from his frame swiftly. As the steam rising from his body swirled to the treetops, she sagged against the weight of her grief and dropped to her knees. Inky tears escaped from her eyes, leaving the once onyx orbs green and glassy.

"Bored now." Her head snapped up and she searched the shadows to find the source of the echo. But they weren't her words, she remembered, as she locked gazes with her doppleganger, who was standing casually before her with one hand on her leather clad hip, licking Warren's blood from the digits of the other. Willow wiped the blackness from her cheeks with the back of her hand.

"Look at you, Fuzzy." Her vampire counterpart muttered, predatory eyes flashing gold as she yanked the human to her feet. "I thought you didn't want to be bad?"

"I.." Willow searched for a response. Her face hardened. "He deserved worse." She spit, her hands tightening into fists as the hiss and crackle of unbridled magic circled her fingers.

"Hey, no need to justify yourself to me little Red." The vampire assured her, hands raised and palms facing forward. She took a step closer, which prompted the human to take a step back. "I couldn't be more proud of you. You did so well!" To make her point, she nudged Warren's cooling body with her toe, the grin her face contorting into something sinister that Willow did not recognize.

"But you've got a long way to go." The apparition, not vampire as she had previously thought, leapt towards her human counterpart and Willow stumbled back as she felt the two merge. Her stomach curdled as the lights and sounds meshed together around her, forming a void that swallowed her hole.

When she awoke, the first thing Willow noticed was the numbness in her fingertips and the chilled breath that escaped from her lips and swirled up to the stone ceiling above. She breathed in deep, noting the putrid scent of rotting flesh that perfumed the air, masked only by the salty smell of the ocean waves that she could hear breaking violently against the cliffs below. In the days since her arrival in Azkaban, she found that she could smell the... what were they called...? Ah yes, Dementors. She could smell the dementors long before and long after they gripped her subconscious in their icy stronghold. She knew they did not cause her nightmares, she'd been having them since that day on Kingmans Bluff, but since the moment she had been unceremoniously deposited here they had taken an ugly turn she couldn't ignore.

She looked around the hollowed out piece of rock that they called her cell, lips twisting into a grimace as she noted the bloody rubble against the east wall, a token left behind from the bloody fists of the last occupant. From what she remembered of her arrival, this prison seemed to be a stone tower off of the coast of parts unknown, standing tall in the middle of the ocean. Attempted escape was ill advised, she was warned sternly by the rather stout wizard who had come along with the dementors to collect her. Willow caught her bottom lip between her teeth, pondering and worrying the flesh until it bled.

 _"Willow Rosenberg of room at the end of the hall, 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale California, you are under arrest for attempted Gaiacide."_

According to the nervous little man who had taken her mugshot, they took stuff like this pretty seriously in the Wizarding World. She couldn't help but snort in response, where were they when Glory was terrorizing the western hemisphere. Willow was being charged with attempting to end the world. The green-eyed girl licked the blood from her lip, drew her knees to her chest, and tucked them under her chin. It didn't matter, her world ended when Tara had been murdered. Where was their law then? She had poured every piece of herself into Proserpexa's effigy. The collective weight of the world was too heavy a burden for her soul to bear, and in the end only the love from her oldest friend had drawn her back from the edge.

 _"You should have finished it."_ A harsh voice whispered in the back of her mind, like a ghost. There, and then gone.

 _But the voice was right. She should have finished it._


	2. Chapter 2: The Madness Vase

A/N: Some dialogue is taken directly from the show. _**This will be marked with italic/bold.** Also, the title of the chapter is the title of a book of poetry by the wonderful Andrea Gibson._

 _\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Penitence & Benediction- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - _

Chapter 2: The Madness Vase

There was a euphoria associated with certain spells that someone who had never practiced darker magic would never be able to understand. It was a cure for her emptiness, as though someone had come along and scooped everything out of her, but the magic filled her completely until her darkness threatened to spill over like a tsunami and wash away everything she had ever known. Still she gulped it down greedily like a desiccated tree after a rainstorm, but every time she got her fix she would wrap her limbs around herself and sob until she was empty again.

In between, during the moments where the emptiness was so vast that she could swear there was an echo every time she spoke, Willow promised herself she would clean up her act. She swore she would quit magic altogether and then Tara would come back and fill the places inside her that she was scared to go. It never really took much to break her resolve. No more than a few days later she was, eyes black as charcoal, staring at the stained carpet from Rack's ceiling. She would run her shaking hands up and down her body so she could remember what it was like when Tara touched her. Sometimes Rack touched her, leaving aphotic trails of magic along her supple skin that sunk into her soul.

When she began her night with Dawn, she hadn't intended on ending up at Rack's, but here she was flat on her back with him sweating over her murmuring her pet-name in her ear over and over again. _Strawberry **.**_ Willow shuddered from a combination of disgust and the black magic running through her, her eyes screwed tightly shut. She watched the rise and fall of a thousand nations exploding in a cadre of brightly colored lights on the inside of her eyelids and felt the magic swell and break within her, washing over her thin body like a blanket of fire.

Her eyes snapped open she and locked eyes with a demon dragging a limp body through a forest in what seemed like a totally different dimension. He roared at her and vanished as she went sailing to the floor. Afterwards, as Willow's pulse calmed, she willed the nausea in her belly away and straightened her clothes the best she could. She made her way to the door of the next room and felt some of the magic remaining in her system, which morphed the world around her into something barely recognizable.

She was vaguely aware of Dawn chirping angrily in her ear, and Willow giving the girl some stupid response that barely made sense. Her hands clutched numbly at the door as she shoved it open into the alley. Somewhere in the back of her mind where the magic hadn't completely addled her, she noted that everything around her was too vivid and moving too quickly to be real, but the sound of her and Dawn's footsteps cracking against the pavement settled her fear. Surely if she were imagining this, her subconscious would leave out something as mundane as the sound of their hurried footsteps, right? So when Dawn came face to face with the demon from her vision in she'd had at Rack's, she scoffed. No way that was real. The demon stalked towards her and Dawn, and Willow was suddenly hyper aware of her best friend's sister standing beside her trembling with fear. The urge to protect her was fiercely battling the urge to shove Dawn at the demon and run in the other direction. "You summoned me, Witch!" The demon snarled. As it glared at Willow, the image disfigured, caught somewhere in between an image of herself and the demon. She looked away, shook her head, and chalked it up to the residual magicks.

 _ **"No, I.. I didn't..."** _ Willow began, but the demon snapped at her before she could finish.

 ** _"DID!"_ ** It accused in a gravely voice. _**"You raised hell with your magics."** _ It reached out with a clawed hand and slashed Dawn across the cheek. As the demon raised the sharpness to his tongue, it's image distorted again and Willow saw herself, pink tongue catching on the tip of a blood red finger. Her shoulder length hair, once ruby red, had turned black along with her once green eyes which had mutated into obsidian orbs twinkling with amusement. Dawn looked incredulously back and forth between the two versions of her sister's best friend before lashing out with her long legs and catching the darker of the two square in the chest. The figure flew backward, crashing into a pile of metal trash bins and garbage with a clang. Willow took the opportunity to grab Dawn by the arm and run with her out of the alleyway, looking back to see the raven haired version of herself rise from the ground and race towards them with unnatural speed.

As Willow and Dawn sped towards the corner of another street, Dawn's step faltered. "S _ **he's coming**_! S _ **he's too fast**_!" The younger girl shrieked. Thinking quickly, Willow used her magic to unlock and wrench open the doors of a nearby car. The engine roared to life and she took off into the road, tires squealing the whole way along. She threw several looks over her shoulder to see if they were still being pursued, her throat bubbling with laughter as adrenaline shot through her. Dawn cast a horrified expression in her direction, screeching something Willow couldn't quite make out. Her heart was pounding in her ears. Willow turned her head to see if their pursuer had given up, and cheered in victory when the alley behind her was clear. Her adulation was cut short when the borrowed car abruptly lurched forward, slamming into a concrete pillar and bringing their escape to an end.

Dawn lifted her head slowly, blue eyes tearfully scanning the wrecked car for her Willow, who was nowhere to be found. She twisted to pull the handle on the door and winced, groaning deeply at the pain radiating from her left arm. She disentangled herself from the smoking car and whimpered fearfully. Suddenly, Willow appeared, leaping down in front of Dawn, a smirk toying with the corners of her mouth.

 _ **"Hey cutie."**_ Willow winked, taking a menacing step towards the younger girl. Dawn stepped back nervously, taking in Willow's appearance. Dark purple veins crossed former redhead's face, contrasted by her stark white skin and blue-black lips. Willow chuckled sinisterly, following Dawn's every movement with her jet black eyes. "What's the matter?"

 _ **"You look terrible."** _ Willow chuckled darkly again.

 ** _"Do I?"_** She asked, and stepped towards Dawn again until Dawn's back was against the brick wall of the building behind her. Dawn gulped. " _ **Don't be like that** _ Dawnie." Willow pouted. Her expression brightened for a moment. "Hey, Dawn, here's a neato idea." A gleeful smile spread across her cracked lips. "I've got a long way to go but I'm running a little dry. Hows about a little pick me up? You are a little green ball of energy on the inside, after all." Dawn looked around her, terrified, as the brown haired girl searched for a way to escape.

" _ **Willow...stop...**_ " Dawn cried.

Raven eyes narrowed as a sneer crossed Willow's pale face. " _ **Mom! Buffy! Wah!**_ " She mocked the terrified teenager. "Come on, Dawn. It's better this way." She raised her hand, her fingers snaking towards the shallow scars that criss-crossed the girl's abdomen. A moan of satisfaction escaped her as her digits made contact and began to siphon Dawn's life force. Green light engulfed their bodies as the magic of the key traveled from it's host to the parasite attached to her torso. Her pretty eyes fluttered closed for a final time as her form grew limp with the last bit of energy leaving her body.

"Mmm mmm mmm." Willow smacked her lips and cracked her joints, a look of sick delight affixed to her features. "Now THAT was good."

 _\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -The Madness Vase- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -_

In her call, tucked safely underneath the rag they had given her for a blanket, the real Willow tossed and turned as the events of her nightmare unfolded. Her heart rate spiked in dread as she watched herself drain Dawn of every last ounce of her vis vitalis. As the dream version of the former key took her last shaky breath, the readhead shot awake. Sweat poured from her despite the chill in the air. She backed into the corner and gathered her knees to her chest while rocking back and forth, snapping the back of her skull against the stone wall until stars floated in her vision.

"Please.." She whimpered tearfully. "I don't wanna be bad, I don't wanna be bad, I don't wanna be bad."


End file.
